


Calling In

by SegaBarrett



Category: St. Elsewhere
Genre: Aftermath of Painful Medical Procedure, Awkwardness, Characters live together while one recovers from surgery, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24192235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Victor goes to take care of Jack after his ankle surgery.
Relationships: Victor Ehrlich/Jack Morrison
Comments: 6
Kudos: 2
Collections: Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020





	Calling In

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AnnetheCatDetective](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own St. Elsewhere, and I make no money from this.

Victor Ehrlich was certainly not known for saying the best thing at any particular time. After all, this was the man who had once told Ellen Craig that her hair “looked like a nuclear bomb denotated over it” and that Elliot Axelrod was looking “like a plump turkey with some cranberry sauce” right before Thanksgiving.

He hadn’t meant anything by either of those, of course, but that didn’t make the people he said them to any less mad, especially when he had pointed out that Ellen’s hair was “bad for children and other living things”. The glares were almost an everyday occurrence by now, and if it wasn’t a glare, it was Craig exclaiming, “Ehrlich! For cryin’ out load!” even though Craig could be just as bad.

So exactly who had thought it was a great idea for Victor to take Jack Morrison back to his apartment and look after him for the next week, while he was recovering from knee surgery, had been crazy. Maybe Dr. Weiss or Dr. Martin could get a diagnosis on whoever it was before lunch, haha, or whoever was working down there these days. His pulse was racing and he felt hot all over, which was not conducive to a productive shift in the OR.

He kept thinking about what he would do if something went wrong with Jack during that surgery. What could go wrong with an ankle surgery, he tried to remind himself, but that only led to him coming up with a hundred and fifty things that could go wrong, that would definitely go wrong, and then Jack would be dead or injured or somehow end up with his ankle where his elbow ought to be and it would somehow all fall to him and everyone would blame him all over again.

It wouldn’t be the first time someone had died on Victor, after all. His parents had kissed his forehead and vanished into thin air, and he’d never felt solid again. 

Not until he had met Jack, that was.

“Ehrlich!” Dr. Craig’s voice took him out of his contemplation. He needed to focus, even if what the evening was going to bring him was the scariest thing he had ever imagined. He was going to need to have social skills.

***

“All right, well… Right in here.”

Victor had not thought this through. In fact, not only had he not thought it through, it would be generous if he even gave himself credit for having thought it halfways.

Jack leaned on his crutch, letting out one of those little sighs of exhaustion that he tended to do with increasing frequency these days.

“It might not be the Hilton but… I mean, I have spent many a day here, contemplating life, so I think maybe you could, too! Not that you’ll have to, because you won’t be stuck alone. I’ll be right here… all the time… to remind you…”

“I get it,” Jack replied, but it wasn’t said with malice. Jack wasn’t like the others. He wasn’t like Craig with the way that he barked and tried to wash his hands of everyone. He wasn’t like Wade or Cavanero who would roll their eyes whenever Victor entered a room.

Jack seemed to really care about him. That wasn’t that surprising – Jack was full of caring, in a fumbling and awkward kind of way. It tumbled out of him, set him doubled up and somersaulting. 

“Well, you just need to stay off your ankle for awhile,” Victor continued, “So let me know if there’s anything that you need.”

“Victor, I can’t order you around like you’re my butler or something.”

“You can call me Chauncey if you want. I could bring around the limousine, if I had one. I can… help you over to the T, I suppose. With a little suit.”

Jack grinned and pretended to bop him in the head.

“I can’t believe you just offered to let me call you Chauncey.” He placed the crutches on the ground and attempted to hoist himself on to the bed, but was having some difficulty. A moment later, he slipped forward and would have hit the hardwood floor directly on his ass – had Victor not leapt out and, in a moment of not-very-well-planned intuition, placed his hand on Jack’s ass. To protect it. At least, that was the immediate plan in the moment. He could feel his cheeks on sudden fire.

“I… Jack… Wow,” Victor managed, speechless, his words tumbling over one another as he leaned forward, tumbling too, not sure he could take it for much longer or else he would just start screaming and running away. And he couldn’t run away, because Jack was in his house, so it wouldn’t really work for all that long.

Jack laughed, light and airy. There was something soft about him, all of him, even after the way that life seemed to keep kicking him in the ass – no, Victor, now is not the time to be thinking anything about Jack’s ass.

“Is everything okay, Victor? Sounds like the cat got your tongue.” Jack settled back down into the bed and Victor rushed out into the tiny hallway. He needed to catch his breath, after all.

***

When he walked back in ten minutes later, Jack was fast asleep. Victor had thrown some water in his face and tried to get his mind on track, tried to get everything settled. He was supposed to be taking care of Jack, not thinking about… well, wherever Victor’s mind currently was, which could be as far off as Vegas, or maybe surfing in California without any of Victor’s say-so. 

If he could bring it back into his head and then keep that head firmly on his shoulders, that would be great. But Victor was sure that, as usual, everything he planned out in his head would come out topsy-turvy helter-skelter when he actually tried to say it out of his mouth. So maybe he should just run away.  
But he couldn’t leave Jack there. He was the afflicted, after all, and do no harm and all of that. 

So he walked back through the door.

“Eh, Jackie Boy,” he said, which he reflected made him sound like some kind of weird Italian mobster. “How are you feeling?”

Jack cocked his head to his side.

“Better, until you did whatever you just did. Now I feel slightly alarmed.” Jack smiled after he said it, though, and then put his good leg over the side of the bed. “My beeper just… beeped. I’d better get back to the hospital. Pete’s already at the sitter’s, I better go in… Where did you put those crutches?”

“Jack, seriously, they did say you’d need a few days to fully recover. That was why we brought the kiddo to the sitter in the first place. Otherwise, we can go get him and muse over The Electric Company for the next few days. But you can’t go in right now.”

“Well, how long has it been?”

Victor looked at his watch.

“Two hours.”

“Well, I’ll be fine.” Jack’s hand slipped out, seeming to look around for the tell-tale edge of the crutches. 

“You are not – you will not be fine, Jack!” Victor exclaimed, putting his hand on Jack’s shoulder to stop him from getting up. Jack’s hand had the handle of the crutch, now, and he was trying to climb out of bed. “They can go on without you. You know that they can.”

“They probably can, but I need to be there. I can’t be home laying around… not after everything with my degree. They already think I’m a fraud…” He hoisted himself back up, and Victor stepped back a moment as Jack let out an exhale with what appeared to be great effort. 

“No one thinks you’re a fraud, Jack! What are you even talking about!” Victor’s hand flew up from Jack’s shoulder to briefly adjust his glasses, before returning to Jack’s shoulder, pushing him down a little. “And you aren’t going to help any patients by passing out on the hospital floor. There’s a staff, and well… they’re all pretty decent. None as great as Dr. Craig, of course, or as good as I’m going to be one day – I mean, well, I hope, if I don’t mess up too bad…”

“Victor,” Jack started. “Shh…”

Victor turned his head, and Jack leaned in, awkwardly placing a kiss against Victor’s forehead.

“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Victor, but… I need to get in there. It’s not really… a forgiving place.”

“Well, my bed is. I mean, not my bed, but your bed. You know what I mean. This bed, the one that you’re in. That’s sometimes also my bed, but not right down, I man, right now….”

“Victor!” Jack said, letting out a sigh. “I mean… If it’s so important to you… I don’t know. I guess I could take a sick day.”

Victor plopped down on the bed beside him.

“And victory is mine!”

“But how will we actually spend the day? I want to be productive. Just because I can’t walk around on this ankle doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t try to get something done.”

Victor dragged a hand down his face.

“I admit defeat.”

***

“You know, Jack, my Spanish just was never really that good,” Victor mused. He was hanging half off the bed, looking at one of Jack’s textbook upside down. “I’m pretty sure this word is a naughty one, actually.”

“There is not a Spanish profanity in my medical textbook, Victor.” Jack scootched back and, wincing, hung his head back over the bed just the same. “Well, I mean, maybe in the reproductive organ section, there might be something going on there.” He let out a sigh. “This is the first time I’ve been really… free to myself in… years? Probably years. It was always one thing after another.”

“Well, Jack, how do you feel now, then?”

“Terrified,” Jack replied, trying to sit up and groaning as he apparently did it much too quickly for comfort. “I feel like something is just waiting to go horribly wrong.”

“It probably will, considering our luck,” Victor replied, cheerier than he intended. Jack chuckled, slowly climbing off the bed. Victor was struck by the sudden realization that he didn’t want Jack to go anywhere at all.

“I need to get up and…” Jack grabbed the crutch, “Get over to the bathroom.”

“Let me help,” Victor blurted, reaching out to grasp his shoulder, but what he meant, he knew, was that he didn’t want Jack to be anywhere he wasn’t. He didn’t know what he thought might happen if he left Jack alone, but he didn’t want to know, either. 

He certainly didn’t expect Jack to lean in and kiss him, above all. Victor nearly gasps but managed to contain it – a gasp would indicate that he thought it was bad, wouldn’t it? And that would be like screaming in Jack’s face, which was definitely more than a little bit rude.

Better to see where this was destined to go, then.

Hopefully somewhere good – _oh, Victor, shut up that brain already and just kiss back!_

He did manage that, thankfully, slipping his tongue down over Jack’s lip and sucking on it a bit awkwardly. 

“I’m supposed to be taking care of you,” Victor reminded him a moment later. “I can’t really get on the Health Spot later and suggest that a good doctor kisses his patient.”

“Sure you can,” Jack replied, a twinkle in his eye that Victor hadn’t seen there in a long, long time. “Just think of it like a naughty nurse movie.”

Victor chuckled at that, and that gave Jack the opening he needed to kiss Victor all over again. 

“C’mon, c’mon,” Victor replied. “You’re supposed to be resting, Jack. What if you take out your ankle all over again? All that surgical work… for naught.”

“Did you just say ‘for naught’? Victor… It’s time to stop,” Jack said, pressing a kiss to Victor’s cheek. “If what you want is for me to stay home… with you… I can do that, but honestly… I kind of want to know why. What is making you stick with me? You could be off doing… well… whatever it is that you do when you’re not at the hospital. There’s no reason to take a sick day to make sure that I recover. Isn’t there something that you would rather be doing?”

“Like what?”

“Like… Well, anything. I’ve come to the realization that I’m not all that exciting.” 

Victor crept over and took a seat on the bed.

“Where’d you come up with that exactly, Jack?”

“I mean… I’m just… Not exciting. What are you looking for here, Victor? Nothing ever happens to me.”

Victor reached out and took one of Jack’s curls between his fingers, rubbing it slightly and watching-imagining as little sparks flew off of it, like light flares against Victor’s irises, and pointed out, “You mean nothing good happens to you. If there’s a disaster, you’re always smack dab in the middle of it.”

“Victor.”

“If there was a guy who was trying to rob Dr. Craig and hold him hostage, somehow he would bypass him entirely – hah, how’s that? – and he would get you.”

“Victor.”

“If a comet came down from the sky and hit the hospital, nothing would be burnt up except for the break room you were sitting in.”

“Victor!” Jack patted his shoulder. “That doesn’t really explain exactly why you want to spend your time with me… if you think I’m that accident-prone.”

“Because,” Victor replied, adjusting his glasses on his face, because he wanted to see Jack clearly in this moment and in every moment from here on out, “You know it, and you keep coming in anyway.” 

And before he could rationalize it, Victor kissed him again. He hoped he wouldn’t have to worry about a reply to that one, besides the silent “yes” that Jack would give him, would keep giving him. Maybe that would be the topic of the next Health Spot.


End file.
